Entries

France Bristles In A U.s. World

WASHINGTON - Let's try for a moment to see the world from France's point of view. For nearly half a century, the French have tried to recapture their former greatness by creating a united Europe with France in charge. The European Economic Community was headquartered from the beginning in …

Written by David Frum on Saturday February 8, 2003

Bet On Bush To Take The Bolder Course

DATELINE: WASHINGTON I'm getting a little choked up at the thought of President Bush's State of the Union address tonight: It will be the first of these big addresses that I won't have worked on myself. Bush's 2001 State of the Union address was delivered at the end of February 2001. …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday January 28, 2003

That Giant Swooshing Sound

It's a strange thing to go to bed at night plain old David Frum and wake up in the morning the "controversial" David Frum -- and stranger still to have the same thing happen twice in one year. The first time it happened to me was in February 2002. I resigned from the White House …

Written by David Frum on Monday January 27, 2003

Enough Preparation, It's Time For Action

In the war on terror, 2002 was a year of preparation and waiting. The year 2003 will be one of action and decision. Here's a look back -- and a guess at what lies ahead. After the spectacular triumphs in Afghanistan in November 2001, the war on terror went quiet -- so quiet that it often …

Written by David Frum on Saturday December 28, 2002

The Air War At Home

An environmental policy that everyone should love In the last week of November, the Bush administration handed down a new regulation that will simultaneously reduce air pollution and increase energy conservation, all without costing either taxpayers or consumers a dime. Is everybody happy? Not …

Written by David Frum on Monday December 23, 2002

Why Would Gore Pack It In Now?

WASHINGTON - Why did he do it? Al Gore was the front- runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Every poll gave him a 3-1 lead or better over any other candidate. He had the best resume, the most supporters, the best organization, the most money. In all the United States, populatio…

Written by David Frum on Tuesday December 17, 2002

Bush Firings Signal Help Is On The Way

It is supposed to have been Gladstone who said that a prime minister must first be a good butcher. Gladstone would have been impressed by the butchery in Washington this weekend: At 10:05 on a Friday morning, without so much as a hint leaked in advance, the Bush administration announced that its …

Written by David Frum on Saturday December 7, 2002

No Joking About Islam

More than 200 people are dead, some two dozen churches and thousands of homes have been destroyed, and much of the Christian population of the Nigerian city of Kaduna driven into exile - all because of a single joke by a Nigerian journalist. The joke was inspired by the controversy over the …

Written by David Frum on Saturday November 30, 2002

Secret's Out

On the evening of December 3 last year, the Bush administration learned of an alarming leak. At midnight, the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas, would be formally listed as a terrorist-linked organization. Federal agents would then raid the …

Written by David Frum on Monday November 25, 2002

The Disloyal Powell Should Be Sacked

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell should have been fired Sunday. It was on Sunday that The Washington Post posted its first excerpt from Bob Woodward's new book, Bush At War. Like Woodward's book on the Gulf War, The Generals , Bush at War is essentially an edited transcript of Powell …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday November 19, 2002

The Democrats Lost Ugly

A week after the big Republican win in the off-year election and the evidence is accumulating: The Democrats lost ugly. Consider just two cases. First, South Dakota. As Byron York reports on NationalReview.com, up until 6:38 a.m. on the morning after election day, it looked as if the …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday November 12, 2002

Loving Animals . . . Without Hating Humans

Lafayette Square is a small 19th-century park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. If you happened to stroll across it in the 18 months after George W. Bush took the oath of office, you were likely to see an odd sight: a tall, red-haired man dressed in a neatly pressed suit, the coveted …

Written by David Frum on Saturday November 9, 2002

Sept. 11 Killed The Race Card

It only seems like nothing happened. For hour after hour on election night, the wires reported no change, no change, no change. But that "no change" was a big change from elections past. The president's party typically loses seats in off-years -- an average of 30 House seats and almost …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday November 5, 2002

Canada Has Earned America's Suspicion

Canada just won itself an expensive victory in the United States. On Thursday, the Americans agreed to exempt Canadian passport-holders from a new rule requiring all persons born in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Sudan to be fingerprinted and photographed before entry into the United …

Written by David Frum on Saturday November 2, 2002

There Is No Making Deals With Dangerous Regimes

"Experience is a hard teacher, but fools will have no other." -- Benjamin Franklin. God likes his little jokes. Not one week after Jimmy Carter received his Nobel Peace Prize, we learn that his most important post-presidential assignment ended the way most of his policies …

Written by David Frum on Saturday October 19, 2002

Schroeder Writes Off The Iraqi People

LONDON - At a meeting with trade union leaders in the last week of the campaign, Germany's Social Democratic Justice Minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, accused Bush of using the same "classic tactic" as Hitler used: exploiting war to divert attention from domestic troubles. Daeubler-Gmelin …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday September 24, 2002

Inauguration

Had the Founders of the American Republic left the capital in New York, it is hard to see how they could ever have had inaugural parades. Sealing off much of the downtown core, two subway stations and one of the city's busiest bridges for three days before a new president takes his oath would spark …

Written by David Frum on Friday January 19, 2001

What Clinton Did To The Left

BILL CLINTON did something that neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan ever managed: He convinced the American left that the United States is a conservative country. For eight years, Clinton steered his party in a rightward direction. Maybe he didn't begin intending to steer that way. …

Written by David Frum on Monday January 15, 2001

Chichen Itza

Everybody has to be somewhere on New Year's Eve, and I was in the Hotel Mayaland, in Mexico's Yucatan, glumly staring into a dish of soup that looked like wallpaper paste and tasted like that same paste mixed with 11 teaspoons of sugar. The soup had been preceded by a sad little shrimp cocktail and …

Written by David Frum on Saturday January 6, 2001

2000 Voter Fraud A Decidedly Nonpartisan Offense

If it were up to the District of Columbia government, I'd be a registered D.C. voter. That sounds reasonable, except for this: I'm a Canadian citizen. Nevertheless, when I moved into the district and signed up for a D.C. driver's license, I was invited under the Clinton administration's "motor …

Written by David Frum on Thursday December 7, 2000